1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to data processing systems and in particular to servers that are utilized to host applications. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method, system, and program product for extending server appliance functionality to allow automatic re-provisioning of the server appliance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many businesses are capitalizing on the marketing potential of the quickly expanding Internet by providing web sites that are accessible to users on the Internet. Most of these business, however, do not have the funding, expertise, or desire to purchase required hardware and software and to set-up and maintain these web sites. These businesses typically turn to companies, such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that provide hosting capabilities along with the required technical expertise and equipment to host the business' applications.
Web hosting, as the process is called, typically utilizes a server or group of servers (commonly referred to within the industry as a server farm), which host software applications that provide the particular service of the server owner or business. Most businesses utilize the ISP to provide and support their specific Internet applications on a server, which is owned by the ISP. The applications are typically stored on a CD-ROM and manually installed on the server by ISP personnel.
FIG. 2 illustrates a server farm connected to the Internet. Server farm 201 comprises three servers, each hosting a business application (or appliance). Server farm is connected to Internet 203. Also connected to Internet 203 is client system 205, which may be utilized to access the Internet 203 and browse or interact with the application hosted by one or more of the servers in server farm 201.
ISPs typically provide a separate server or group of servers for each business application being hosted. Multiple servers (or server groups) with different applications are controlled by an ISP and make up the sever farm which is “plugged” into the Internet. Each server, including its affiliated software and applications, are extremely costly to acquire, and thus, ISPs seek to provide efficient utilization of the limited number of available servers.
Internet dynamics and user demands often requires an ISP to provide access to different applications and purposes from among a number of possible applications and purposes at scheduled times or on user-demand. The traditional way to handle this requirement is to laboriously install more servers on the racks with the desired application(s) and then configure the servers to meet the demand or to switch out one of the servers with another server that has the desired application loaded on it (see arrow path 207 and 209 of FIG. 2). This proves to be rather costly and time consuming.
Appliance servers are standard severs that operate a specific application via a specific operating system (OS), (i.e., single-focused servers or server groups), and are typically installed for one purpose at an ISP/ASP server farm. Occasionally, an application running on a particular server is desired to be (temporarily) replaced by another application. This may be due to a need to run the other application when all available servers are already being utilized (i.e., there are less available servers than the number of applications desired to be hosted). Whenever the application being run on the appliance server is no longer desired or is being replaced, the ISP personnel has to manually remove the server from the rack (or shelf), un-install the current application, install the next application, and re-configure and re-boot the server before placing the server back on the shelf. The steps of manually changing or installing an appliance server results in significant time loss and may also result in the appliance sever being temporarily unavailable to users desiring to connect to the server.
Occasionally, some ISPs maintain a bank of small personal computer (PC) servers. If the capacity of the server farm is exceeded, the provider adds an additional PC server at minimal expense compared to purchasing a high end server. Thus, hardware scalability is fairly easy to manage compared to the high end server systems. However, like the high end server systems, software scalability is not easily accomplished. In order to update the software in the server farm, each system to be updated must be taken offline, reformatted, re-partitioned, and then loaded manually. This is laborious and very time consuming. In addition, the existing OS's are stuck with working with a physical hard drive that contains a maximum of four in-flexible partitions due to compatibility and the present PC operating system's configuration. With a manual re-provisioning process, if the new application size exceeds the pre-allocated hard disk partition or space allocated for re-provisioning, the re-provisioning process cannot be completed and a new server is required.
The present invention recognizes that it would be desirable to have a method and system for automatically re-provisioning/re-purposing an appliance server to provide a different application and/or appliance responsive to a schedule or to user-demand. A method and system that automatically re-configures a server with a new or different application without requiring significant user manipulation (or interaction) would be a welcomed improvement. These and other benefits are provided by the present invention.
The present invention recognizes that it would be desirable to have a method and system for automatically re-provisioning/re-purposing an appliance server to provide a different application and/or appliance. A method and system that automatically re-configures a server with a new or different application and that provides a dynamic hard disk partition scheme that allows the dynamic adjusting of the partition size of a hard disk during a re-provisioning/re-purposing process to accommodate the variable sizes of new applications. These and other benefits are provided by the present invention.